leave descendants unworthy of them; in fact, advantage has been taken of this fact in order to call in question hereditary transmission, whereas we should rather perhaps find in it a striking confirmation of the law. Galton, in his work on English judges,1 observes that of thirty-one judges raised to the peerage previous to the close of the reign of George IV., nineteen are still represented in the peerage by their descendants, and twelve peerages are extinct. Having minutely investigated the cause of this extinction, he discovered them in social reasons, in motives of convenience which led to ill-assorted unions: those peers whose families soon disappeared 'married heiresses.' Even when unequal matches do not produce such grave results as these, it is not to be doubted that, in virtue of the laws of heredity, they must cause a degeneration, which, being again and again repeated, must of necessity bring about the extinction of a gifted family, or, what is worse, its mediocrity. It is evident that a son may take after his indifferently gifted mother as readily as after his illustrious father, and that, as in any case he must be the resultant of the two, the chance of his being inferior to his father is as two to one.

Considered as an indirect cause of decline, heredity acts by way of accumulation. Every family, every people, every race brings into the world at their birth a certain amount of vitality, and of physical and moral aptitudes, which in course of time will become manifest. This evolution has for its causes the continual action and reaction between the being and its surroundings. It goes on until the family, people, or race has fulfilled its destiny, brilliant for some, distinguished for others, obscure for the majority. When this sum of vitality and of aptitudes begins to fail, decay commences. This process of decay may at first be of no moment, but heredity transmits it to the next generation, from that to the following one, and so on till the period of utter extinction, if no external cause interferes to stay the decay. Here, then, heredity is only an indirect cause of degeneration, the direct cause being the action of the environment, by which term we understand all action from without-not only climate and mode of life, but also manners,

1 Pages 130-132. See the concluding chapter of the work, with regard to the question whether great men leave no posterity.

customs, religious ideas, institutions, and laws, which often are very influential in determining the degeneration of a race. In the east, the harem, with its life of absolute ignorance and complete indolence, has, through physical and moral heredity, led to the rapid decay of various nations. We have no harem in France,' says a naturalist, but there are other causes, quite different in their origin, which tend ultimately to lower the race. In our day, paternal affection, with the assistance of medical science, more certain, and possessed of more resources, makes more and more certain the future of children, by saving the lives of countless weak, deformed, or otherwise ill-constituted creatures that would surely have died in a savage race, or in our own a century or two ago. These children become men, they marry, and by heredity transmit to their descendants at least a predisposition to imperfections like their own. Sometimes both husband and wife bring each a share to this heritage. The descendants go on degenerating, and the result for the community is debasement, and, finally, the disappearance of certain groups.'1

The only way of getting a clear idea of a case of psychological and moral decay, hereditarily transmitted, is by finding for it some organic cause. The physiology and anatomy of the brain are not yet sufficiently advanced to explain it; we cannot say to what change in the brain such and such a decay of intellect, or such and such a perversion of the will, is to be attributed. But cerebral phenomena and psychical phenomena are so closely connected that a variation of the one implies a variation of the other.

This being assumed, let us take a man of average organization, physically and morally. Let us suppose that, in consequence of disease, outward circumstances, influences coming from his surroundings or from his own will, his mind is impaired, to only a trifling extent it may be, but yet permanently. Clearly heredity has nothing to do with this decay; but then, if it is transmitted to the next generation, and if, further, the same causes go on acting in the same direction, it is equally clear that heredity in turn becomes a cause of decay. And if this slow action goes on with each new generation it may end in total extinction of intellect.

1 Revue des Cours Scientifiques, vol. vi. p. 690.

These remarks also apply in every respect to nations and races: all that is required is that the destructive influences should bear, not on an isolated individual, but upon a mass of individuals. The mechanism of decay is identical in the two cases; and we are justified in the conclusion that the causes which, in the narrow world of the individual and the family, produce a considerable diminution of the intellectual forces, must produce the like effect in that agglomeration of individuals which constitutes a society.

Historians usually explain the decline of nations by their manners, institutions, and character, and in a certain sense the explanation is correct. These reasons, however, are rather vague, and, as we see, there exists a more profound, an ultimate cause-an organic cause, which can act only through heredity, but which is altogether overlooked. These organic causes will probably be ignored for some time to come, but our ignoring them will not do away with them. As for ourselves, who have, for purposes of our own, attempted to study the decay of the Lower Empire-the most amazing instance of decay presented by history-tracing step by step this degeneration through a thousand years: seeing, in their works of art, the plastic talent of the Greeks fade away by degrees, and result in the stiff drawing, and in the feeble, motionless figures of the Paleologi; seeing the imagination of the Greeks wither up and become reduced to a few platitudes of description; seeing their lively wit change to empty babbling and senile dotage; seeing all the characters of mind so disappear that the great men of their latter period would elsewhere pass only for mediocrities-it appears to us that beneath these visible, palpable facts-the only facts on which historians dwell-we discern the slow, blind, unconscious working of nature in the millions of human beings who were decayed, though they knew it not, and who transmitted to their descendants a germ of death, each generation adding to it somewhat of its own.

Thus, in every people, whether it be rising or falling, there exists always, as the groundwork of every change, a secret working of the mind, and consequently of a part of the organism, and this of necessity comes under the law of heredity.

Here we bring to a close our general study on the consequences of heredity. We must next look at the details. In order to proceed with the inquiry methodically, we will proceed from causes

to effects, that is to say, from sentiments and ideas to acts, and from acts to social institutions. We will therefore study the influence of heredity, first on the constitution of the human soul, on its intellectual states, its sentiments and passions, then on the acts which give outward expression to these inner states; lastly, on the institutions which result from these acts, and which not only regulate, but also consolidate them. Thus we shall have to consider, successively, the psychological, the moral, and the social consequences of heredity.

CHAPTER II.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF HEREDITY.

I.

THE study of the psychological consequences of heredity must begin with the instincts. We will not here discuss a question already treated,1 since it will be enough to state briefly the certain or probable results already obtained.

If heredity acted merely the part of a conservator, its consequences, psychological or otherwise, would present no difficulty whatever. On the hypothesis of individual types created once for all with their physical and moral attributes, the only consequence of heredity would be the indefinite repetition of these types, with some accidental deviations-unimportant facts of spontaneity. But the case is very different. Notwithstanding the character of immutability usually assigned to instincts, they may vary as we have seen, and their variations are transmissible. Hence the first consequence of heredity, that it renders possible the acquisition of new instincts. This consequence rests on facts, and is certain and indisputable.

Another consequence, one that is merely possible, and which we have stated only as an hypothesis, is the genesis of all instinct whatever by way of heredity. Instincts, regarded as hereditary

1 See Part I. ch. i.

habits, would be the result of the accumulation of psychical acts which, originally very simple, have, in virtue of the law of evolution, passed from the simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, thus giving rise to those highly complex acts which seem to us so wonderful.

Hitherto we have restricted ourselves to looking simply at the bearings of this doctrine; we are now to meet with it under another form, and we shall study its bearings here also.

II.

The same question, in fact, arises with regard to the intellect. Here some assign to heredity only a secondary influence, asserting that it allows the transmission and accumulation of certain characters, and makes the development of the intellect possible, in the individual and in the species.

Others go much farther, and attribute to heredity an actual creative power. According to them, the genesis of the constituent forms of intellect and of the laws and conditions of thought is the work of heredity.

We will first examine this latter doctrine, the most radical, the most recent, the least known out of England. There it has been held by a few contemporary philosophers, and has given an entirely new shape to the famous problem of the origin of ideas. If this doctrine be true, it gives so important a part to heredity that we must here discuss it fully.

It is one of the great merits of the school of sensationalists that it early perceived the importance of questions of genesis. Through all its researches into the origin of our cognitions it was really concerned with the embryology of mind. It does not, however, appear to have been at first clearly conscious of this, or it would be impossible to explain the conception of a statue by Condillac and Bonnet-an actual adult individual, whose genesis could not but be illusory and artificial. This is as though the physiologist were to take man at his birth, without concerning himself about the embryonic period which preceded it. It is singular to see how superficial, external, and imperfect are the processes of Condillac, and with what simplicity he thinks the most involved and complex phenomena may be explained and produced.